


Secrets are hard to keep

by intern_at_german_chapterhouse



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Everybody Dies, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, everybody knows Peter is Spider-Man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:07:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intern_at_german_chapterhouse/pseuds/intern_at_german_chapterhouse
Summary: Peter is keeping a lot of secrets. The most important and well kept one being that he is New York's favourite superhero Spider-Man. So clearly, everyone knows.This story ties together Civil War, Spider-Man Homecoming and Infinity War.





	Secrets are hard to keep

Peter Parker was very bad at keeping secrets.  
He didn't know that of course, he thought he was rather good at it since no one found out that he was Spider-Man. Well, except for Tony Stark. And Ned. And The Vulture. And aunt May. But still. He kept it a secret known only to a few.  
What he was unaware of was that basically his whole God damn school knew. MJ figured it out in DC when Spider-Man came to save the Academic Decathlon team. She recognized the way he moved, like she said she was very observant. It took Liz a little longer but she pieced it together after she moved because of her father's trial. She watched every single piece of footage she could find on the internet and compared it to what she knew about Peter. Plus there was the way he reacted to her dad. The others at Midtown Tech spent weeks trying to guess who Spider-Man was and somehow someone figured it out and then it kind of spread. Without her telling anyone directly. But Midtown Tech isn't just any school and its students aren't as blind as everyone else seems to be.  
The only one on the Decathlon Team who was still in denial was Flash. His brain just couldn't even imagine Penis Parker and Spider-Man being of the same species, he was still convinced that Spiderman had to be something more than just a mere human.  
Of course there were still some students at Midtown Tech that were completely clueless, most of them simply because they just didn't care about Peter or Spider-Man. But at least 90 percent knew. They never talked about it, no one ever mentioned it. Or at least not at school. Study dates in cafés or sleepovers were a completely different story. Peter and his alter ego were subject number one of every conversation outside of the high school's halls. When there was no chance that Peter or Ned could hear them they were talking about the crime fighting high schooler in the red and blue suit.  
And even though they never spoke about it, everyone simply knew not to mention it to teachers or parents or someone who might not be such a fan of Spider-Man. They kept his identity from everyone they felt had no business knowing. They even covered for Peter when he was late or fell asleep in class. I mean, they saw what had happened on the news!  
If Peter had forgotten to do his homework, somehow every single time there appeared a copy of it in his backpack without him knowing where it came from or how it got there. Every piece of paper was written in a different hand writing but it was always signed by one Peter Parker. He didn't question it, most of the times it happened he was way too tired from his night activities anyway. So he just turned in a paper written by someone else and moved on.  
The students of Midtown Tech gave their best to make Peter's days better when he got into a fight the night before. They snuck chocolate into his backpack too or left a coffee on his desk before he got there. He barely noticed but he got way more smiles in the halls than before. They held rallies dedicated to Spider-Man just to see him grin when he thought no one was really looking.  
And they avoided things that hurt him or made him feel bad. No one dared talking shit about Iron Man. Captain America, the rest of the Avengers and especially the so called Civil War that went down in Germany were mostly avoided too. Sometimes teachers would bring up the Accords and everyone noticed Peter flinching and sinking deeper into his seat. When a teacher started to give off their opinion on the matter and the students felt like Peter wouldn't want to hear that particular opinion they defended Iron Man and the Accords, no matter what they actually thought.  
There had been videos showing Spider-Man's fight with the vulture and since then Peter was never left alone in small rooms or near fire. If they couldn't shield him from experiencing either, they could at least try to take his mind off of it.  
One English teacher planned a trip that involved a ferry ride. The next day, ten kids turned in a note from their parents saying that they had a huge phobia of ferries.  
They were pretty good at keeping it subtle. Peter actually never got suspicious. His school and all of his classmates had been kinda weird since the day he started going to Midtown Tech so he explained their behavior with them being sort of geniuses and also hormone controlled teenagers.

 

The day of the Snap, Peter's class had been on a trip to the Museum of Modern Art. Peter was the first to spot the space donut and Ned brought everybody's attention to it. Or so him and Peter thought. Actually, half the class saw Peter jumping out of the window and putting on his mask - including Flash. While most of them rolled their eyes at Peter being 'sneaky', Flash's jaw dropped and he started stammering something about "Peter... Penis... Spider... Penis-Man".  
Most of them got home after, since the fights had occurred in a part of the city none of them lived in. So when the space ship vanished and reports were shown on TV declaring Iron Man dead they prayed that Peter was okay. That he wasn't smack in the middle of the fight, that he'd had half a brain and went home. But then they showed a picture of a second figure hanging on to the ship. Spider-Man. He was gone too. But they held on to hope. Peter wasn't dead, he couldn't be. He was Spider-Man! They watched videos of fights in Scotland and in Wakanda, waiting for the superhero they knew to be a teenager to show up and save the day. They waited and waited and waited. Their eyes glued to the TV, their cell phones in their hands, texting friends and classmates, "Have you seen him?", and "Has he been in the news?", but there was no sign of him.

  
And suddenly the group chats went quiet. MJ tried to get a hold of Tom who was in Chemistry with her and Peter. But he didn't answer. Almost no one did. It was like half of the students in every chat suddenly logged off, put away their phones. Didn't they care? Didn't they want to know what happened to Peter? MJ knew that they couldn't really _do_ anything but they could at least _be there_ and _care_. And keep an eye out for Peter.  
It was only when her mom didn't answer to her questions from her place at the kitchen table that MJ suspected something was going on. She had been sitting there for two hours, talking to MJ every now and then, asking how her day at the Moma had been like that was the most important and exciting thing that had happened that day. But now MJ's calls for her mother were met with silence. So she got up and went into the kitchen. Her mother wasn't there which was weird because the only way out of the kitchen was through the living room where MJ had been ever since she got back from school.  
MJ was pretty smart. Everyone at Midtown Tech was, but MJ certainly was one of the smartest at Midtown. Still, it took her a while to realize what had happened. And when she did she called Tom. He didn't answer and she could practically see his cell, laying in a heap of dust.  
She called everyone from Midtown who's number she had saved in her phone. The first to answer was Ned.

 

It took the media hours to get the news running again. Too many people were missing, too many vital roles left empty. They only had theories, nothing concrete. Not until Steve Rogers himself got on TV. He told them he was in Waka da and informed them of what Thanos had done.

 

MJ and Ned cried together, holding each other. They both lost their parents. And they lost Peter. MJ didn't need to tell Ned that she knew. Ned wasn't as sleep deprived as Peter had been. He had figured out what everyone was doing weeks ago. He held onto MJ as much as she held onto him while they mourned their families and friends.

 

School started again three months after the Snap. The classes were smaller, there wasn't a teacher for every subject. But somehow they made it work.  
And still ,the students at Midtown Tech kept taking care of Peter or rather his memory. It wasn't avoiding certain topics of conversations anymore, or faking ferry-phobias. No. Now, it was leaving a desk empty for him, in case Peter hadn't died in outer space but was actually coming back right after lunch. And it was bringing food to his aunt who had taken the loss of her nephew very hard. It was mentioning his name every day, keeping his memory alive and taking a picture of him up on stage when they graduated. It was meeting the others that knew him and knew his secret every week after they went off to college - most of them went to MIT anyway. When Tony Stark came back they all got their hopes up only to have them crushed into a million pieces when their friend didn't come back too. They stayed connected, the teenagers who lost half of all the people they loved. The kids who grew up the day Spider-Man died.

 

Yes, Peter had been incredibly bad at keeping secrets. But that was what he had friends for.

**Author's Note:**

> I really like the theory that Endgame takes place four years after Infinity War so I incorporated that theory in here. I also kind of love the idea that basically everyone knows that Peter is Spider-Man and just had to write something about it. I hope you enjoyed this little fic and we'll see what actually happened to Peter's class mates in Endgame and SM: FFH :)


End file.
